The $11.4 million project to widen U.S. 190 in Mandeville will drastically improve traffic flow when it's done, but traffic will be slow at times during the construction process, state officials said Wednesday. The major portion of the work is scheduled to begin next month.

Citizens and engineers go over plans for the widening of a section of U.S. 190 in Mandeville during a public workshop at City Hall Wednesday Kim Chatelain NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune

The state Department of Transportation and Development held a public workshop Wednesday to discuss the project with local residents. Dozens of citizens and many local officials attended the session and were allowed to huddle with engineers to ask questions about the road work.

The project will widen U.S. 190 from two to four lanes between Lonesome Road and St. Joseph Street, and a raised median will be added, clearing a bottleneck that has slowed traffic on the busy roadway. The two-lane bridge over Bayou Chinchuba will be replaced with two new spans, each with two lanes, keeping the bridges consistent with the new four-lane roadway. A 6-foot-wide sidewalk will be added for pedestrian traffic. Improvements to traffic signals and drainage ditches will also be included in the project, according to state highway officials.

Lacey McCaskill, the project engineer for the state highway department, said U.S. 190 will remain open throughout most of the project, although traffic flow will likely be affected once the major portion of the work begins. The project is expected to take more than a year to complete.

The long-delayed project should solve a traffic problem that has gnawed at motorists since the state completed a $28 million companion project in 2009 that widened most of U.S. 190 through Mandeville. However, that project did not include the widening of the road on either side of the Chinchuba Bridge, thus creating a bottleneck that frequently brings east-west traffic to a halt between the Greenleaves subdivision and the Mandeville post office. Up to 20,000 motorists a day pass through that area on U.S. 190, the highway department has said.